Oceans of Emotion: Kait Rhoads’ Glass Sculpture
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Childhood experiences of life on a sailboat in the Bahamas and Caribbean left a profound mark on Kait Rhoads. The experience of growing up on the water has provided great inspiration for her artwork. The artist’s Sea Stones series hints at its watery origins. Each sculpture is a small world in itself, an intimate object you can hold in your hand. A talisman, the work looks almost molecular, like plankton carapaces as observed under a microscope. Rhoads states: “My work is inspired by nature and informed by memory. And, three oceans—the Caribbean, the Indian and the...
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Contrasting Forces: Weston Lambert’s Stone and Glass Sculpture
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Weston Lambert transforms semi-precious stones and found rocks into profoundly beautiful, time-defying glass sculptures. By incorporating an original process for laminating the two materials and by cold-working the surfaces of the glass and rock, the artist is able to bring his skill to bear on these objects that seamlessly transform from stone to glass and back again. Lambert’s work is about dualities and the balancing of contrasting forces. He’s looking for the place where transparency/opacity, and ephemeral/eternal coexist, each taking part in creating equilibrium. This dynamic...
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Jeremy Sinkus’ Geologicalized Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Current work by Jeremy Sinkus includes his Contemporary Art Nodules, inspired by collecting and focusing on the top 10 attributes that the artist and viewers found intriguing about glass objects. Simultaneously ancient and from the future, his Nodules combine texture and form with transparent windows that allow the viewer to explore unknown inner worlds. A former mineral collector and digger, Sinkus put down his chisel and picked up a torch when he realized his fondness for minerals and natural history was all encompassed in glass. Sinkus says: “Glass is geological....
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The Artistry and Craftsmanship of Dan Alexander
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
From his Micromorphisms to his Opticals and Pinwheels, Dan Alexander explores the mesmerizing world of optical illusions, where intricate designs and mind-bending patterns come to life in stunning glass artistry. From captivating sculptures to breathtaking installations, each piece in this collection is a testament to his artistry and craftsmanship. Much of Alexander’s inspiration comes from photographs he has taken or his travels. Looking at one micro-aspect of an object, he envisions how that small segment could be used in repetition to create an overall...
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Maria Sheets: Stained Glass, Conservation and Vitreonics
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
In her summer 2024 exhibition Trial By Fire at Core Art Space, Lakewood, Colorado, Maria Sheets exhibited a series of colorful, sculpturally dense, illuminated glass panels of portraits and landscapes created in a unique process that combines the mediums of traditional stained glass grisaille/enameling with fused glass “painting” known as Vitreonics. The technique was documented in Justin Monroe’s award-winning documentary Holy Frit. The movie traces artist/designer Tim Carey’s journey through making the world’s largest stained and fused glass window with the...
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Glassworks Ajeto and Ricardo Hoineff: IGS 2024
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
In 2021, the town of Nový Bor became the main organizer of the International Glass Symposium (IGS), and once again this small glassmaking town in the north of Bohemia will turn into a true world glassmaking metropolis for a few days. Each of the previous symposia was unique, and this year’s jubilee will be no different. Place and material are the unchanging basis of the tradition, but glassmaking and art are a living, leading and original phenomenon reflecting the times. This year’s IGS will take place on a much larger scale than previous years. The number of organizers and...
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Gene Koss: From Farm to Flame
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Gene Koss uses glass as a medium of pure sculptural expression resulting in monumental sculptures of cast glass, steel and light. He developed innovative techniques to transform his memories of the mechanized Wisconsin farm of his youth into foundry-based glass sculptures. He combines glass and steel found objects to create small-scale sculptures that often also serve as studies for his larger-scale works. Opening on September 20, 2024 and running through February 9, 2025, The Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass (BMM), Neenah, Wisconsin, presents a major solo exhibition of Koss’ work: From...
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Ryan Thompson: From Blown Away 4 to Huron Street Studio
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Those who watched to completion the hit Netflix competition series Blown Away 4, will no doubt remember Ryan Thompson’s final gallery installation, Where You Are is Where You Need to Be. In all black glass, he created large vessel forms that served as sentinels to the recording of time. A blown glass pendulum in the center of the room recorded each moment in a footed reliquary of white sand below it. Its existential message spoke to the viewer silently. Permanently. Thompson states: “This installation was created to satisfy a need to slow down, contemplate, and analyze...
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Peter Layton and the Legacy of London Glassblowing
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Artist, pioneer, and mentor, Peter Layton is one of the founding fathers of British Studio Glass. He discovered the art form while teaching ceramics in the US in the mid-1960s and has played a major part in elevating glass from an industrial medium to a highly collectable art form. Most importantly, he gave it a home in the UK. This month, London Glassblowing presents Glass Heaven, an exhibition uniting two exceptional glass artists: Layton and Tim Rawlinson. The show opened August 2 and will run through September 1, 2024. Representing the next generation of glass talent, Rawlinson...
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Glass Bead Artist, Kristina Logan: The Dot Queen
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Kristina Logan makes unique and complex beads in intricate patterns whose sometimes knobby forms recall the remarkable eye beads made in ancient China. Yet Logan’s style is purely contemporary, reflected in work that stands out for its originality, sophistication, and innovation. She is not only interested in beads as body adornment but also as decorative elements for boxes, candlesticks, goblets and teapots. Logan states: “Beads are part of my lifelong fascination with art and ornamentation. Glass beads form a historical thread, connecting people and cultures throughout our history.” In...
info_outlineTalking Out Your Glass podcast kicks off 2024 with our first episode of Season 9! This fascinating panel discussion on flameworking features four of the technique’s most well-known artists: Paul Stankard, Carmen Lozar, Dan Coyle aka coylecondenser and Trina Weintraub. At different points in their careers, these four artists compare and contrast their journeys and experiences working glass behind the torch.
Considered a living master in the art of the paperweight, Paul Stankard’s work is represented in more than 75 museums around the world. Over his 52-year artistic journey, he has received two honorary doctorate degrees, an honorary associate’s degree, and many awards within the glass community, including the Masters of the Medium Award from Smithsonian’s The James Renwick Alliance and the Glass Art Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a Fellow of the American Craft Council and a recipient of the UrbanGlass Award—Innovation in a Glassworking Technique.
Stankard’s current exhibition From Flame to Flower: The Art of Paul J. Stankard can be seen at the Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey, now through February 4. A documentary film titled Paul J. Stankard: Flower and Flame by award-winning filmmaker Dan Collins, premiers on January 31. On March 16, the film will be shown at Salem County Community College, Carney’s Point, New Jersey, at the International Flameworking Conference, presented there by Collins.
Born in 1975, Carmen Lozar lives in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, where she maintains a studio and is a member of the art faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. She has taught at Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Craft, Pittsburgh Glass School, Appalachian Center for Crafts, The Chrysler Museum, and the Glass Furnace in Istanbul, Turkey. She has had residencies at the Corning Museum of Glass and Penland School of Craft. Although she travels abroad to teach and share her love for glass – most recently to Turkey, Italy, and New Zealand – she always returns to her Midwestern roots. Lozar is represented by the Ken Saunders Gallery in Chicago, and her work is included in the permanent collection at Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah, Wisconsin.
Besides continuing her work at Illinois Wesleyan University, Lozar will be teaching workshops at UrbanGlass, June 4 – 8, 2024, and at Ox Bow School of Craft, Saugatuck, Michigan, August 4 – 10, 2024.
Menacing monkeys. Peeled bananas. Bad-tempered bears. Uniquely original Munnies. Daniel S. Coyle’s whimsical, toy-inspired aesthetic in concert with mind-blowing skills on the torch have earned the artist a hefty 116K following on Instagram. The artist recently celebrated 12 years of being a full-time pipe maker. Coyle’s work has been displayed in galleries around the world, and has been seen in print and web publications including Vice, Huffington Post, NY Times, and in the books This Is A Pipe and his self-published Munny Project book. Now residing in Western Massachusetts, he works alongside some of the state’s top pipe makers.
Coyle’s 2024 events include: Community Bonfire (Maine), January 27; Michigan Glass Project, June 21 – 23: two-week intensive class at Corning Studios, Corning, New York, June 24 – July 5; Parlay Philly in September TBA; and Bad Boyz Do Basel 3 (Miami), September TBA.
Creating playful objects and curious scenes inspired by childhood memories and dreams, Caterina Weintraub uses glass, a fragile and heavy material, to recreate iconic toys or re-imagine personal memories that evoke a sense of sentiment, wonder and discomfort. She utilizes a variety of techniques to create sculptures and installations in her Boston-based studio, Fiamma Glass. From intricate torch work to large-scale kiln castings and hot blown pieces, she chooses the process best suited to realize her vision.
In 2024, Weintraub will participate in Habatat’s Glass Coast Weekend, Sarasota, Florida, February 1 – 4; Glass52, International Glass Show, Habatat Gallery, Royal Oak, Michigan, May 5 – September 6; and the International Glass Show, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana, December 2 – February 18.
Enjoy this panel discussion about how these four artists crafted careers using the techniques and appeal of flameworking and where the process is headed into the next decade and beyond.